A Love Story, with Recipes
by Elizabeth Bard
narrated by Ann Marie Lee
Find out more about this book and author:
Goodreads
Website
Published: 2010
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Genre: Memoir, Romance, Travel, France, Paris
Hardback: 336
Rating: 5
First sentence(s):
I slept with my French husband halfway through our first date.
In Paris for a weekend visit, Elizabeth Bard sat down to lunch with a handsome Frenchman--and never went home again. Was it love at first sight? Or was it the way her knife slid effortlessly through her pave au poivre, the steak's pink juices puddling into the buttery pepper sauce?
Lunch In Paris is a memoir about a young American woman caught up in two passionate love affairs--one with her new beau, Gwendal, the other with French cuisine. Packing her bags for a new life in the world's most romantic city, Elizabeth is plunged into a world of bustling open-air markets, hipster bistros, and size 2 femmes fatales. She learns to gut her first fish (with a little help from Jane Austen), soothe pangs of homesickness (with the rise of a chocolate souffle) and develops a crush on her local butcher (who bears a striking resemblance to Matt Dillon). Elizabeth finds that the deeper she immerses herself in the world of French cuisine, the more Paris itself begins to translate. French culture, she discovers, is not unlike a well-ripened cheese-there may be a crusty exterior, until you cut through to the melting, piquant heart. Peppered with mouth-watering recipes for summer ratatouille, swordfish tartare and molten chocolate cakes, Lunch in Paris is a story of falling in love, redefining success and discovering what it truly means to be at home. In the delicious tradition of memoirs like A Year in Provence and Under the Tuscan Sun, this book is the perfect treat for anyone who has dreamed that lunch in Paris could change their life.
My two-bits:
I found this to be a delightful arm-chair travel read with an American female perspective of living in Paris.
Loved the food focus and recipes that are sprinkled nicely throughout the book.
* Listened to audiobook version.
* part of Paris in July (here)
